1. Technical Field
My invention relates to new designs of windmills in several types to obtain maximum benefit from the energy offered by the wind in a given limited space at a minimum cost, in a large commercial scale.
In the convertion of the wind energy particularly by means of the windmill, it is very essential that the windmill be in contact with as much wind as possible that passes thru a given space at the minimum cost of materials, labor, maintenance, operation cost, and minimum use of project space (land or sea), in order to provide a competative energy cost to the consumer. This maximization of wind-contact is done by the use of large wind sails made as large as possible, as in the sail boats, with the use of a specially designed mechanical device that handles the large sails in great quantities, at least cost.
In this invention, particular attention is concentrated on the maximum harnessing of the wind energy that is available in a given space in the maximum effeciency and effectiveness of energy convertion out of whatever strength of wind that arrives at the windmill at the least cost of energy production. It is also the objective of this invention to produce a large scale windmill that is capable of driving a large irrigation pump or to make a remote area energy independent by making the windmill able to work during violent weather conditions to a certain limit (when energy is abundant) and able to store the energy in the form of compressed air, electricity, and/or hydrogen gas fuel at any location (land or ocean). It is also the objective of this invention to make the ordinary man able to construct his own energy machine and to free the poor nations from highly commercialized high technology machines. It is to ease the pressing problems of having to import energy from other nations when in fact there is so much energy at home. This is to effect distribution of wealth and to promote peace around the world thru self sufficiency of energy.
2. Background Art
The first prior art is the rotary blade windmill which has very limited power output capacity because it cannot be expanded large enough as much as it is wanted so as to increase the wind contact. Increasing the wind contact of the old rotary windmill is done only by attaching longer blades but only to a limited extent because the tip of the blades will be moving faster than the wind--that means loss of energy. This means that the old rotary type of windmill cannot be constructed to a very large scale for purposes of having as much wind contact as it might be wanted. There are also existing new designs of windmills such as those that rotate around a vertical axis but they are just limited to small sails carried by a single rotating expensive superstructure and that 50% of the sails serve as wind break for the other sails thereby making 75% of the sails not really working. There are also many designs of windmills using horizontal elongated endless chains carrying the sails that move horizontally but they are just designed for short span, for few number of sails, for small sails, and for fair weather conditions--there being no sufficient inexpensive intermediary mid-span supports for heavy vertical loads and for lateral wind loads to make it able to function on high speed winds. They are fail to meet the requirements for the construction of low cost large commercial type of windmill that can take advantage of the abundant energy during violet weather. The construction of these existing old designs will be very expensive if they are made to carry very large wind sails.
The available wind being offered by nature is so much on land as well as on the ocean from sea level to 3 miles above the earth around the world, but the existing designs are just too small to tap the tremendous opportunity. From this view point, there must be another design of a windmill that can maximize wind contact any where at least cost in order to maximize benefits from the available wind, hence, the new inventions herein presented.